I still prefer a Party Palace as I get to keep the population and structures. Well worth the extra cost of all those constructors.
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Party Palaces rule! Combined with lots of diplomacy, gifts and just generally sucking up, you can wipe out AIs without building a single (high maintenance)ship. So much cheaper, and as you said - you get the planet intact and you can maintain good relationships with AIs you are flipping. And once I have flipped a particular area I just destroy all those starbases. Thought about converting them to Terror Stars and moving them to new locations but takes too long on big maps. Just easier to make fleets of 12 constructors (enough to build the all the culture modules) and send them off to do their job. All my recent end games have been like that on bigger maps. Turn off auto-launch and forget about a system until there are 12 constructors there.
I am wondering if that qualifies as a cheese tactic, sending hordes of constructors to adjacent sectors, seeing as the AI ignores it. Still gonna do it though
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